Journals

TUG, the game that I've been developing, has been greenlit on steam!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=220041725

Hell yeah!

Great to be done with school! Graduated DigiPen this past December, and now it is on to looking for work in the industry! I am excited and hopeful for the future, as well as grateful for my experiences in the past (and that people are still downloading and playing my old games!)

I hope to continue to grow as a designer and would love to create more goldsrc / source maps if I have time in the future!

Creating a password

Go on, then! Let's do another!

http://drawception.com/play/UXwF-vu-7CSRpUj2alf7h_Ul9cZ_cu6lzsjgCkwZvMY/

Arguably one of the oddest jobs I've ever had was doing the live graphics for this Duel in the Pool swimming event on a massive screen in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games.
It involved chroma keying eighty athletes in two days on-site, and one of the quirks of being freelance is that I often have to provide my own kit - cue the use of my lights, my green screen and my PC. I am, however, entirely okay with spending two days chroma keying round bottoms in swimsuits and a cute blonde presenter.

My workspace was in the walkway between the warmup pool and the main pool so it was unbelievably weird working away as eighty half-naked Olympians marched back and forth past me. Also I had to do the entire job without shoes on, as walking poolside with shoes is forbidden.It was very, very cool seeing my work on the big screen displaying in front of a capacity crowd over a whole four-day event, but that was an incredibly odd job.

Sweet

Fucking

Jesus.

New years and crimbo have been pretty crazy, but totally shoving that in the shadow was my recent 320 mile trip down to Manchester and back to see The Prodigy performing at the Manchester Warehouse Project. I bought the tickets July time - and unfortunately only a couple months ago I found out I had a programming exam the day after. I'm still waiting to see if i've passed it or not.

But holy fucking jesus christ titballs, don't pass up an opportunity to see these guys. Absolutely fucking insane. The venue - the manchester warehouse project - was insane.it was the basement of some converted victorian warehouse - the upstairs is a fairly modern hotel. The basement? Basically empty. It had toilets that had obviously been recently made - brick and mortar, temporary lighting and sinks... the bare concrete walls, lack of anything "homely" made it seem like I was in some sort of illegal rave. Which is an amazing atmosphere to have.

The actual night dragged on a bit. I was expecting the prodigy to be on around half ten / 11, but it turns out they were on at midnight. Midnight. Arriving at 9 o'clock with my best mate, we had to put up with some seriously shite support bands for 3 hours. The first was "Gedo Mega Bitch" - who I later found out was actually married to one of the prodigy's MCs Keith Flint, was terrible. She kept on playing generic drumstep pish with Marilyn Manson videos playing on the LED screens. Boring. And this dragged on for an hour.

Next up was "Black Futures" who were apparently known as Subsource before. These guys were actually really good - it was a live drum and bass / drumstep band (imagine pendulum live but good). It had a drummer, some guy on guitar, the lead vocalist on an ELECTRIC DOUBLE BASS ( all sorts of badass), and some guy on synths.I loved their music, they were a bit too drumsteppy for my tastes ( if they focused more on DnB they'd be FANTASTIC) but were definitely one of the highlights of the evening. After that was Caspa - a generic DJ. He had an MC on stage with him , and for an hour and a half he was playing skrillshite and other dubstep - hilariously boring. We left the main area to get check out what else was in the venue. After coming back and finding out that he was unfortunately still on stage, "Jaguar Skills" was on afterwards. He had a much better taste in music, more drum and bass and classic dance / rave songs. One gripe about him though was that he'd stop a song mid way to do some shite self-promoting crap or just do a "I SAY JAGWAR YOU SAY SKILLS" shit. For the half-songs that he played, he was alright.

After what seemed like a bloody eternity, being partially blinded by all the lights that seemed to be scattered about all over the venue like a bad rash, and partially deafened due to simply how loud the speakers were, the prodigy EVENTUALLY came on. We got moved from being near the front to pushed to under some funky light setup in the middle of the venue because people KEPT ON PUSHING IN and considering these were all mancunians in their late 30s, I wasn't in a position to stop them.
Insane.These guys were everything they were hyped up to be. Maxim was keeping the crowd under control, whilst Liam Howlett was churning out some of the prodigy's new unreleased tracks - which I swear to god are going high in the charts once they're released. They were that fantastic.
Apart from almost dying from dehydration, the only gripe I had with them was their sound. Keith and Maxim were clear as day, and so was the music, but whoever was in control of the subwoofers deserves a punch - I like me some bass, definitely - but it was at the point where the bass was so intensely loud that it drowned out the rest of the sound - and helped make me deaf in my left ear for 3 days. Eventually managed to get back home at 4 in the morning, and up in edinburgh for my exam at 12.

Video of "Smack My Bitch Up" from the day I was there on youtube.
Verdict : Go see them. I'm making sure I've got some tickets for sonisphere.

AGDQ is going on this week. Here's the line up http://gamesdonequick.com/schedule

and you can watch it here. http://www.twitch.tv/speeddemosarchivesda/popout

I'm excited for the Valve block and Cave Story this evening.
Also, donate to stop cancer, i did.

In the quest of finding good nootropics, I've stumbled across Rhodiola Rosea.
It seems like it's one of the best supplements for any kind of effort. It works on improving memory and concentration too if that's the case - it's an adaptogen(idk how that's spelled).

In the past I've taken Lecithin supplements, but they don't seem to have any effect. I've also taken Gingko Biloba, but didn't really felt anything with this either(well it's actually written in the prospect that you have to it continuously for at least 6 months to see any effect).

But 2 weeks ago I finished a batch of 500mg Spirulin capsules. I don't know what kind of improvements they had on my concentration and memory as I didn't study very hard at the time, but I obviously felt more energetic and could get away with less sleep while feeling rested.
I want to take 1000mg capsules of Spirulin and couple them with Rhodiola Rosea. While Spirulin is more affordable, Rhodiola seems a bit... expensive.

I'm considering remaking some of my old maps. Especially lost_technology.

I had originally planned on making a sequel but it would be fun to recreate the same level with much more skill and dexterity. Plus my maps used to be half playable to begin with. I don't think I used to even compile with vis...

HAPPY NEW YEAR, TWHLers!

Let's all group hug and have a fantastic 2014 together.

POINTLESS!

I'm at work from 9 - 5 today. On Christmas Eve I was dealing with the last couple of clients who hadn't closed on the Friday before, now everyone is closed until the new year, but I still need to be here to make sure their sites stay online...

I'd much rather be lying in my own pooling blood, with a broken leg, clutching for dear life to a rust woodcutter's axe while surrounded by bad guys with rifles on one side and the living dead on the other... or you know, playing DayZ.

The Steam Sale and Community Marketplace is keeping me entertained for now though...

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holiday to those of you that get them, yes I am still alive, yes I do look in from time to time. I got a message from one of the members looking for old maps and stuff that I might have had.
Sorry to say that all of my TWHL archive has gone even though I have scoured backups that date as far back as 1996 (yes, before some of you were born, don't rub it in). Sad really because the engine to run them are still alive and well because of sites like this and the modding community in general.
Anyway, all the best for the New Year..
Take Care,

A

So this exists:
Cubli
Self balancing cube that can walk and jump....
want!

Took one of these apart today:

It's a treasure for scavenging lots of wires, capacitors, resistors and whatnot.